1. Register and pay
2. Browse the speakers and “hire” them
3. Make application to speak

Usability Test Video Recoring

Video summary and suggestions:

• Overall look and feel – outdated
• Fainting women on the top, doesn’t give the right impression
• Better use one good photo of a women speaker than a bunch of not so good photos
• Logo is ok, could be cleaner
• Logo should link to home page
• Login area is wasting a really good “real-estate”, should be moved down
• It’s hard to find the most important task “join” or “register”, should be on the right on top
• The “membership” link doesn’t look like a link
• Links to special offers don’t look like links, and they open in a pop up a lot of people won’t see
• I would like to see bullet points with benefits instead of all this text
• The link to join doesn’t look like a link, should be replaced with a BIG button

Registration:

• I can’t be both a member and non-member, should be radio buttons instead of check boxes (I called it “bullet points” by mistake on the video…sorry)
• No indications of which fields are mandatory with a red asterisk
• No indication of what rules apply for username/password
• Doesn’t “remember” some of the fields if submission is failed
• “Reenter” should be “Re-enter” (I think)
• I didn’t get a email confirmation with my username and password

Registration details form:

• Auto-fill fills out the wrong info
• No indication of which fields are mandatory with asterisks

After registration

• After I finish registration, you should take me directly to the payment page, I am already sold
• It’s hard to find where to click to pay with all the clutter on the page
• I am confused with the button “Become a member” at the bottom, I though I was already a member
• Why do I see “Member home”, do you really want me to click it? Or do you want me to pay? Show me only buttons you want me to click at that moment

Payment page:

• Asks me to populate all the fields, even though I already filled them out. Should be pre-populated with my data
• Asterisks should be to the right of the label field and should be red
• There is a cancel button, why? should be removed (first priority) you want me to pay or not?
• After I make the payment, I expect you to tell me what to do next

Finding speakers:

• It’s easy to find speakers
• Mini profiles are a bit messy
• Link to the full profile doesn’t look like a link
• Profile page looks clean.
• Website URL is not clickable? I would like to visit the speaker’s profile
• I see no “Call to action” – to hire the speaker. For example “Hire this speaker” or “Get more information”

Apply to speak

• What does “Apply to speak” mean? I thought it was applying to speak in a certain event, but it’s taking me again to the membership registration page.

Task: Buy JomSocial

Scenario:You decided to have instant community solution, go to jomsocial.com find the various versions, and buy it.

Usability Testing Notes:

1. Can’t find the different versions
2. Can’t see anything that will help him compare it to other products
3. The Video Testimonial banner is very distracting
4. 1.6 version is not clickable
5. What version does he need if he doesn’t have Joomla? What does he do if he wants it for a different platform
6. Linux website on showcase list confuses tester
7. Can’t find the word “Version”
8. Store – a retailer? A shrink wrap product?
9. Can’t choose a version
10. Thinks it’s a tangible product
11. Doesn’t know whether the verisign certification icon means this page is secure or that he gets this certification when he purchases JomSocial
12. Asked to enter the domain, but what if he doesn’t have it set up?
13. Asked to enter the type of site, finds it confusing

Task: Choose a budgeting software, ask for demo

Scenario: Your company needs a  web-based budgeting software, choose a budget, find a request for information, ask for a demo.

Usability Testing Notes:

1. Looks like a beta site, overly simplistic
2. Doesn’t understand what they do
3. Can’t find the word “budget”
4. Tester is irritated
5. Would go to Google and find something else
6. Design not professional
7. Tester wants to see bullet points of what they are offering, plus testimonials
8. Can’t find where to submit information. Won’t call. May email them.

Task: Find an activity

Scenario: It’s a rainy day, you want to do something with your children. Find an activity at the museum

Usability Testing Notes:

1. Can’t find activities, just events
2. Doesn’t know if she can show up or needs to sign up
3. Doesn’t know the price
4. She can’t find any details signing up or price
5. Found the price, still can’t tell if she needs to sign up

Tasks:

1. What are the benefits of creating a profile?
   • Create a profile
   • Logout of your profile
2. You recently moved to Manitoba, and would like to find some information on the golf courses that are available in your area that are listed on ScoreATeeTime.com:
   • Find Selkirk Golf & Country Club
   • Locate the Course Description
   • Locate and go to Selkirk’s course website to view more information on the course
3. Find and book a tee time for around 12:30pm on June 8th at Fore Links Golf Course (Hard Coded)
4. You are located on the Northeast side of Winnipeg (Postal Code: R2G 0A7):
   • Find the golf course that is closest to your location and book a tee time at around 2:30pm for tomorrow for two golfers.
5. You forgot what time your tee time was at for your upcoming booking and can’t remember the price:
   • Locate that information
6. Search for a tee time at 3:15pm on June 5th in Manitoba for 4 golfers
7. You have heard great reviews on Score National and decide you would like to play there, but you would first like to see how far away it is from your house (215 Oakland Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba)
   • Find directions to the course
8. Book a 3:15pm time for 3 players this course

Usability Testing Video (may take a few moments to load)

• Red text – “Low hanging fruits” Items that should be fixed ASAP
• Purple text – “Low hanging fruits” Items that can and should be fixed pretty easily

Logo

• Much better, easy to read

Home page

• I like that you describe the purpose of the site, but I would put that higher
• Not clear what the featured listings are all about, showing random listings that irrelevant to me

Benefits of creating a profile

• I don’t see it on first glance

Registration

• When I go to create a profile, I see benefits on top, but the text should be shorter
• “Rent” information? not sure this is the right word
• You replaced green with gray — good
• Google ToolBar Auto-fill doesn’t work
• Can’t see the “close” link on graybox of “terms and conditions” and “privacy policy”
• If the form didn’t go through, the check box of “agree to terms and conditions” should stay checked if they already checked it
• There is a BUG with entering a phone number…it changes it if the form is not submitted the first time

Congratulations

• Hard to read, the gray is too light
• Credit card notice, is it the right place?

After registration

• Taking me to search result of information that is irrelevant to me
• Better show me results of tee times close to me, based on the registration information (sorted by proximity to me)

Logout

• Easy to find
• Links are hard to read, should be darker

Search for specific golf course

• Do I need to see all the tee time information if all I wanted was to get information about a certain course?

Golf course information page

• Some data is light gray, looks like it’s “grayed out”

Search tee time menu item

• Shows me again search results that irrelevant to me as well as featured listings that are irrelevant to me

Search by postal code:

• Results are sorted by time, they should be sorted by distance, and then by time
• Distance drop down – starts from 75 KM, should be 5,10,25 (maybe later on when you have more courses)
• The payment form didn’t get submitted for some reason, network timeout?

On all grayboxes:

• esc key is not needed, you can just leave the “close” link

Score national

• Missing search feature that shows me search results of golf courses with distance from me
• I can’t find an easy way to find how far it is from me
• Counting on people to figure out how to use it on Google map, is not realistic
• Please check www.lookbetteronline.com as an example
• Now that I am on the course profile page, is a “call to action”, I expect to see “book now” or a list all the available tee times right on that page.
• Place the info under a new tab “information” that will clear up a lot of space for more important thinks like “call to action”

Benefits banner

• Looks great but why do I need to see it if I’m already a member?
• It shows when I am logged in but not when I am logged out, should be the opposite.
• When I am logged in, show me only relevant featured listings

Suggestions:

• After registration take me directly to a page with search results closest to me (sorted by distance), on top add a the title “Tee Time Close to you”
• Add tee time list on Golf Course profile page with “book” buttons
• Show only featured listings that are relevant to me
• Add a search feature for just searching for courses, the result should show only list of courses, not tee times, when I click on a course, i can see course information plus a list of tee times

I had the pleasure of meeting founder Chris Rault at the 2008 CMS Expo. He is a very bright guy with some fantastic ideas for Joomla, and he’s determined to change the way we see and use Joomla templates. Chris asked me to perform usability testing on Morph BETA and I was very excited to do so.

I didn’t read any of the template’s documentations because I wanted my experience to be “fresh.”
That led to one unpleasant surprise. In this limited beta version, Morph wipes out the site’s entire data, replacing it with template information. Chris assures me that this will not be an issue in stable
releases. Users will be able to choose whether to keep their content or to install the Morph content.

There were a few other issues but they were very minor and as you will see in this usability testing video and in the summary below, I was very impressed with this template’s breadth. You can control every aspect of your site’s design: logo, colors, width of different elements and so
on. I tested only a few features but I am sure I will be testing and
using all of them in the future.

Morph is going to change the way template developers and users see templates. It will also allow users to create user-friendly sites easily. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it evolves!

Usability Testing Video:

Usability Testing Video Summary:

• A good start! The template and components are easily installed…
• Butwhere’s my information? Everything’s gone! This beta version is
  currently being used by only a few developers. When it’s released,
  users will be able to choose to keep their data.
• Template settings are unclear.

  Component backend:

• My first reaction is that the backend is very slick and easy on the eyes.
• But it’s hard to read the field label. The dark gray on black background makes text difficult to see.
• Selectingthe color is a little fiddly. Once, I’ve made my selection, I can’t see
  the color I’ve chosen, and I’m not sure what the “secondary color” is. The popup doesn’t explain.
• The text in the drop down menus is too small.
• The logo options are great. I can easily upload my logo image and set my logo width and height.
• There’s a huge number of menu settings. I haven’t been able to test them all yet.
• I’m not clear what the Toolbar block is. That should be made clearer.

Installer:

• I’m not clear what the Themelet is.
• Where’s my logo? That I can upload it is great – but I’d like to see it, and it should become the default automatically.
• Most importantly, when I upload anything, all the other settings are gone. It would be best to save everything upon upload.
• I’m not clear how I can change the module colors.

On the whole, I found Morph very promising, slick and beautifully designed.

Suggestions:

• Color selection should indicate which color is currently selected.
• The background of tabs should white or light gray to make the text easy to read.
• The drop down menus should also be bigger.
• Everything should be saved when the user uploads a logo, favicon, or anything else.

To learn more about Morph click here! For more usability testing reports, click here.

Here are the 3 tasks Scott has asked me to perform:

• Sign up to trial and then login and listen to meditation
• Get to sonia choquettes page and listen to an audio and make it to the signup page for one of her events
• Search for law of attraction and attempt to buy a product

Usability Test Video:

Overall look and feel:

• Nice design
• Logo can be improved
• Login on the top right is good
• Search on the right place
• Video has a non-standard shape, and is too low on the page
• Video can be more professional
• Try now – what does it mean?

Trial page

• Page doesn’t look like a part of the site
• Video is good but should be on the front page, so that I can know what it’s about before I go to the trial page
• Not a free trial? May as well make it free
• Image of the house, what is it doing there? seems out of place
• Text that is underlined it looks like a link, don’t make it underlined unless it’s a link
• Don’t make anything blue unless it’s a link
• Too much going on on the page, too many options
• Better focus and simplify the page
• Newsletter shouldn’t be there
• The orange button should be there as the only option to click

Registration

• Asterisks should be red and on the right
• It would be nice to have a paypal option
• I get an error after I purchase
• Logged in or not? one place says I am logged in, and another says I am not

After login

• Upcoming – shows items that already happened
• Download meditation – wasn’t possible
• Listening to second meditation wasn’t successful

Scroller

• Images don’t click

Search

• Search results don’t show the right results
• The search results page are broken
• The second search doesn’t work either
• Search by drop down of teachers works
• Tabs look good
• When I click on event I get a page that’s not very attractive with no styling
• On products tab the icon is broken
• Audio players don’t work on audio tab

Store:

• There is a link on the top that takes to the same page
• Frame on law of attraction category is not necessary.

1. There are empty fields on the profile page. Empty fields on the front end is neither attractive nor necessary. It’s best to show only the populated fields.

   

2. My links appear on other people’s profiles. If I am logged in and looking at someone’s profile, all my tabs appear at the top of the page. But it makes little sense to mix my stuff with theirs. When looking at someone else’s profile, I should only see the buttons and links that concern them.

   

3. The username on the mini profile that appears in the search results does not link to the profile. The link should lead to the profile. The image links, but that’s not enough.

   

4. On the date, only the month field is a drop-down menu.The site would be more user-friendly if all the fields were drop-downs. I should also be able to select the date format.

   

5. Some of the profile default values are unusual. The default values on an application should always be those that people are most likely to use. On a social site, few people will want to post their cell phone number on their profile, for example, so that shouldn’t be mandatory.
6. Mandatory fields are not marked with a red asterisk.Mandatory fields on the profile are marked with a black asterisk on the left but it would be better if the asterisk was red, and on the right. It’s not a biggie but it would be better.
7. Mandatory fields on the photo album are confusing.It’s not clear which fields on the photo album are mandatory. It turns out that the description field box is mandatory, but why should it be? Only the album name is really necessary. Every time users are forced to enter unnecessary data, they become frustrated and have a poor experience.

   

8. The email “To” field is confusing.When composing a message, it’s not clear whether I should enter a username or an email address. Nor is there any indication of which fields are mandatory. For example, I can’t send a message with no body, but I’m not told of an error.

   

9. There’s a Reset button for the Search field. I discussed this issue on “10 Top Button Usability Mistakes.” Reset buttons are always wrong. People click them by mistake and find they have to enter all their information again. In this case, they’d only have to rewrite one field, but it’s still unnecessary.

   

10. Group numbers should link to the members list.When looking at the list of groups, the number of the group’s members should link to the list of members. And the image of the group should link to the group’s home page.

    

And that’s it. It wasn’t easy to find these mistakes, which is a good sign, but fixing them will be easy too and take JomSocial to the next level. It is a great community extension for Joomla and I can’t wait to see how it evolves and improves.

WorldFriends.tv

Tasks:

1. Register (for free).
2. Upload photo
3. Purchase a paid subscription.
4. Invite their friends to register (for free) using the Invite feature.

Watch the usability test video

Video summary and suggestions:

Register

1. The logo should have a .tv in case they forget.
2. The most obvious thing is the “register” button, that’s good.
3. It’s telling me that there is an error before I even have a chance to enter the password/email verification
4. Maybe the most popular countries should be on top (Japan and USA)
5. Privacy and terms should not take to a new page, should be a pop up(that can’t be blocked)
6. Should allow me to choose “any” ethnicity, for people who don’t have a preference.
7. I received the confirmation email only after about 30 minutes. Maybe it would be better to make it clear that they don’t have to confirm the email to keep using the site.

Invite friends:

1. I expect to be able to upload my pictures, but if inviting is a higher priority then it’s ok
2. It should be clear on TOP that I can select which friends to send to.
3. Instead of a block of text, you should put some bullet points of “why invite friends”
4. It’s asking me to choose both webmail server AND the email extension (hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.). It would be better to eliminate the webmail selection, since it’s obvious if I choose the email extension which webmail I will be using.
5. The list of imported contacts should be on top, not at the bottom, because I couldn’t even see it was there. The message should be under it.
6. After I invite, there is no clear indication that I did.
7. After I send an invitation I should get a new page with indication of who invited AND “call to action” — what action(s) you want me to take next. ie: invite more, upload a photo, buy membership.

Upload photo

1. Photo description: is it optional?
2. Missing: bullet points of “why I should upload my photos”
3. I can’t click on my photo to see it in large size

Purchase subscription

1. Regular – what does it mean?
2. Too complicated, too many options
3. You have 3 membership types with 8 different options total.Better test a new page with no more than 1 type of membership with 3-4 options.
4. It’s unclear why different types have different options.
5. After I pay, there is no acknowledgement that I did. I can’t find “my account” to manage details of my subscriptions and ability to cancel.

It still has some minor bugs and even more minor usability issues, but over all it’s a great start!This is certainly one of the best Joomla Extensions I’ve ever encountered, and I am proud to be the usability partner of Azrul, the creator of JomSocial.

Installation

It would be better if I could un-install ONE file and have all the extensions organized there in folders, rather than have to uninstall a file, and then un-install 2 other files, and then all files are together in one place and not organized by groups (modules, apps).

Configuration Tab

• Hints explain everything – good
• Walls – what are they?
• Notifications of what? Maybe move it to the other email notifications area
• Some variables are missing from hints
• Terms & conditions, maybe allow to use an article ID
• SEO layout – a bit confusing.
• Templates – a preview of the different templates would be nice

Apps

• It would be good to have all the apps listed here
• It’s incorrect to say that apps can be installed on Joomla’s plugin manager

Custom Profiles

• Very intuitive
• “Select” – what does it mean? Drop down? Check boxes?
• It would be nice if I could choose which fields show on registration
• Buttons are hard to see on the editing pop up.
• Cancel button should be on the left or removed (you have the x on top to close the pop up).
• There is a bug when adding a group, it assigns the fields of another group to his new group
• New group should show last

Templates

Very techie, it would be nice to see HTML templates I can easily edit, even if I am not a programmer

You’re using the word template twice: on the look and feel but also as far as the functionality and page layout. Maybe you should find a different word.

Groups:

You’re using the word “group” twice to describe two different things. First- for profile creation, and second, for members groups, maybe find a different word for the profile creation.

Mail Queue

Not sure what it means? When I go to documentation it’s pretty advanced stuff.

Profile: front end

It would be nice if I could set it up so that empty fields don’t show.

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